Jed MacKay’s Avengers is one of Marvel’s finest ongoing series in recent years, hands down. The Avengers by Jed MacKay Vol. 6: The Grail brings together more than 30 issues worth of carefully planted plot threads into a satisfying and genuinely climactic conclusion. Through line-wide events, crossovers, and shifting status quos, the series has maintained an impressively high level of quality, culminating in a collection that feels like both the payoff to MacKay’s run and a fitting celebration of the landmark 800th issue of Avengers.
This volume wraps a lot of things up, but the narrative centerpiece is the final showdown between Kang, Myrddin, and the Avengers. Opening the collection from Kang’s perspective proves to be an inspired choice. His Terminator-meets-Rashomon tale not only catches readers up on the larger conflict but also provides the collection with a confident, character-driven opening. Despite being at the end of a lot of storytelling, the issues collected in this book form a cohesive story. In this, MacKay has successfully landed what will probably be seen as a classic Kang tale in the future.
Marvel
The Grail is the ideal continuation of such an historic, long-running series. It takes up a classic Avengers beat in centering Kang as the villain and, by extending rather than altering his core characteristics, MacKay takes him on a completely new journey with a fresh motive and purpose. That so much of the conflict ultimately comes down to Kang’s existential boredom after centuries of rewriting history feels both inevitable and strangely poignant, honoring the character’s legacy while giving him room to evolve.
The high stakes in this volume give the Avengers plenty of opportunities to combine their abilities in inventive ways. There’s an unmistakable X-Men quality to these sequences. Not that X-Men have a monopoly on synergy—the Avengers just seem to be influenced by that mutant improvisational energy, where powers can overlap and evolve in the middle of battle while still following predefined battlefield outlines. The artwork elevates these moments through bold color and elegant visual composition, deciding whether a clever combination attack should command the page or subtly enrich the chaos unfolding around it.
Just flip through this book at random and you’ll find every page a total feast for the eyes. The art is detailed and gritty to add weight to the fight sequences, but also lucid and organized enough to present some of the more cosmic moments in understandable ways. Every sequence, and really, every panel, feels fully realized; this is about as full-up as a comic book page can get, with no amount of clarity or perspective lost in the chaos. I really can’t put it any other way: this book is a visual event that you should not miss.
Marvel
Another strength of The Grail is the way it rewards readers who have stayed with the run from the beginning. The return of Hyperion and the X-Men isn’t treated as the kind of obligatory cameo but as the natural culmination of the relationships and storylines MacKay has been cultivating for years. Their appearances carry emotional and narrative weight because they’ve earned it, reinforcing the idea that this Avengers run has always been interested in building a lasting world. In that sense, The Grail feels like an important part of Marvel’s larger effort to reestablish the Avengers as the centerpiece of its universe. With Armageddon and the stories beyond it already being positioned as the team’s next major era, this volume serves as an ideal bridge to whatever comes next.
The Avengers by Jed MacKay Vol. 6: The Grail collects the 800th issue of Avengers. It’s a rewarding issue that draws a thread through many of the universe-wide events that MacKay’s team faced down, from the Fall of Krakoa to Blood Hunt and One World Under Doom. It’s more than a victory lap for the success of the narrative web that the creative team spun—it also serves as the single defining moment that brings down their nemesis in the end. Few Avengers runs have balanced legacy and reinvention as gracefully as this one. If this volume marks the end of one era of Avengers, it makes a compelling case that the next one is worth getting excited about.
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